


Hyperpyrexia

by Camelittle



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Hospital, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bottom Merlin, Dubious Consent, Fever, Fluff and Smut, Fuck Or Die, Gunshot Wounds, Hospital Sex, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Knotting, M/M, Medical Professionals, Omega Merlin, PWP, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, dubious medical ethics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 07:46:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13759509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Camelittle/pseuds/Camelittle
Summary: It’s just another day for Arthur, the leading consultant at Camelot Hospital’s overstretched accident and emergency department. Until, that is, they wheel in an unconscious man with a bullet wound in his thigh. It doesn't take long before Arthur realises that he's more than just another patient.But it can't be! Omegas were hunted to extinction, years ago. And yet, here one is. Wounded, and in heat.As an alpha, Arthur must take care of him.





	Hyperpyrexia

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my hurt/comfort bingo amnesty card - prompts: bullet wounds, hypothermia, dub-con, wild card (fever / delirium). Naturally, with that combination of prompts I could only go A/B/O. With apologies to actual doctors everywhere.  
> Enormous thanks to the wonderful pelydryn for the lightning fast beta, reassurance and all-round splendidness of her support.  
> Also, the chatzy crew - Tee and Moon and Woody and Fussel and Plu and everyone - you know who you are! - thank you for listening and just being generally awesome.

Arthur rushes out of the triage area to greet the incoming paramedic team.

“He was found in Camelot forest.” Percival jogs alongside the bed, past rows of tense-faced families. The patient is pale but sweat-drenched, unresponsive, swathed in blankets. “Signs of a struggle. Bullet wound to right thigh. Hypothermic at first. Heart rate elevated. Other vital signs are good. No sign of a head wound. We think his unconsciousness is to do with the hypothermia.”

“Is the bullet still in the wound?” Arthur Pendragon, the consultant on duty, keeps pace with the trolley until they reach an empty bay. He pulls a curtain along to reveal a bare bed.

There’s a vague yet tantalising aroma lingering about the place. For a second, it overrides the normally insistent A & E smell of disinfectant and stress. He sniffs the air, puzzled, but it’s gone.

“No, it just grazed the skin. The guy got lucky.” Percival twitches aside the blankets that cover the man’s body so that Arthur can see the wound.

“He did indeed.”

Although angry, it is fairly clean and the bleeding has stopped. The friction burned the skin where the bullet grazed it. It must hurt like hell.

That scent is back again. A wave of it hits the back of Arthur’s throat. It’s warm and musky, like the forest, but compelling too. He lifts his head, frowning, nostrils flaring as he tries to trace it.

“Do you smell that, Perce?” he says to the paramedic as they work to transfer the patient from the trolley onto the hospital bed.

“Smell what?” Percy shrugs and wrinkles his nose. “Piss and disinfectant, the usual A & E stuff, that’s all.”

But that’s not what Arthur means. There’s something else, drowning out all the sanitised hospital smells, and Arthur can’t work out what it is.

He looks at the patient again. His skin is reddening and pores are beginning to leak sweat. His temperature is clearly coming right up. The guy’s eyes are flickering, and he inhales sharply through his nose as he turns his head from side to side, as if trying to follow some scent. Does he smell it, too? It’s maddening, on the edge of compelling, whatever it is.

“I think he’s regaining consciousness.” Arthur places a gentle hand upon the patient’s wrist to find the pulse. There it is, fast but strong and steady beneath his fingertip. He is hot to the touch. Sometimes patients’ thermoregulation goes a bit haywire after hypothermia, but this feels like a fever – perhaps a dangerous one, hyperpyrexia. “We need to check his temperature. Go and grab a nurse and get them to bring some paracetamol and cold water from the cooler, will you?”

Percy steps out through the curtain. At that moment, the patient’s eyes flicker open.

“Hello, sir.” Arthur addresses him gravely. “Welcome back. How do you feel?”

The instant that the man blinks and fixes Arthur with a pair of ocean-blue eyes, there’s a deep jolt of recognition in Arthur’s belly. It’s all he can do not to double over.

The man’s nostrils flare. He moistens his mouth. Arthur tracks the movement of his tongue across a sweep of plump lips.

“Hot,” he says, hoarsely. He closes his eyes and groans, which is when Arthur realises that he’s still holding the man’s wrist. For some reason, he doesn’t want to let go.

“Have a few sips of water,” says Percy, back already with a clear plastic cup full of water in one hand and a paper dispensing cup in the other.

Arthur takes them both and places them to one side while he props the patient on plumped up pillows. Then he encourages the man to put the paracetamol on his tongue and swill it down with a few sips of water.

“There,” he says. “That will help to bring your temperature down.”

He’s not sure why he’s doing this: normally he’d just issue advice and let the rest of the team deal with the patient’s personal care, but there’s something about this man that raises bumps of curiosity on Arthur’s skin and sends protective hackles rising whenever he contemplates someone else taking care of him.

“What’s your name, sir?” says Arthur, reluctantly placing his patient’s wrist back onto the blanket.

He’s fighting a sudden urge to kiss those bitten-pink lips, and what the actual hell? What the hell is happening to him? Arthur is a professional, but that tantalising fragrance, the man’s pale skin, his red lips. They’re having an impact on him that he has never experienced before, not from a patient, nor a passing fancy, nor even from a _lover_. Something different is happening, something that his mother warned him about, years ago. Something impossible. Something that makes his skin tingle and his heart race, makes him want to press his nose into the pale crevice of the man’s neck and inhale deeply and _taste_. It can’t be...

“Merlin,” the guy whispers, his eyes ranging over Arthur’s body before returning to glare at his face. There’s an air of desperation about him. “I’m Merlin. Are you the one? Are you my al--?”

“What happened to you, Merlin?” interrupts Arthur. He’s trying to be matter of fact and professional. But his pulse is racing, pounding in his ears, and emotions are coursing through him that he just can’t... _Are you the one?_ Is he? The one what? “You have a serious bullet wound. Who shot you?”

“The bullet wound, I can heal myself!” Merlin flashes him a sad smile. “That’s not the problem I need you to solve, Doctor. It’s my, um.” Merlin’s tongue glistens as he moistens those plush-looking lips again. “Hormones…” he shifts his weight and beckons Arthur closer. Arthur bends to hear the whisper. “Omega-hunters… They chased me away… “

Merlin’s shivering and his eyes are bright with fear.

“I’m in heat. I can’t stop it. It could... Am I going to die?” Merlin gasps and a spasm wracks his body. “It hurts. I’ve got to…”

“I hope it won’t come to that,” says Arthur, but dread sends cold tendrils up his spine.

Merlin’s so far gone. Texts about omegas were largely absent from Arthur’s university library, victims of the purge, but because of his knot Arthur made a big effort to to track some down. So he has read what can happen to omegas if they go into heat and there is no alpha to mate with them. It’s not a fate he would inflict on anyone, least of all...

“You’re my only hope. Help me. I know you can.” Merlin leans up, so close that his lips almost touch Arthur’s neck. His breath gusts sweet and delicious against Arthur’s cheek. “You want to. I can sense it. I can _smell_ it.”

“Right,” craoks Arthur, looking around to check that no-one can hear, not even Percival, who’s thankfully busy gathering his things together.

Arthur clears his throat, thoughts racing. His hand darts down to encircle Merlin’s bare arm, and he sucks worriedly at his teeth. The heat radiating off the man is insane.

“Right,” he says again. He bends to speak into Merlin’s ear. “Um. I’m Arthur. I’m a doctor. And… I’m an alpha. But nobody knows about that. So, it’s going to be okay. You’re safe with me. You can trust me.”

“I knew it” Tension leaches out of Merlin and he slumps back on his pillow like a puppet whose strings have been cut. A ghost of a smile plays around his lips. “At last…” his eyes flutter closed as if in relief, lashes forming a stark black arc against the flushed pink of his cheekbones. His mouth parts gently as he exhales in a relieved sigh.

Fuck.

Everyone has always told Arthur that omegas were hunted to extinction years ago, and Arthur, urged by his mother to keep his knot secret, has resigned himself to a life spent alone and unfulfilled.

Until now.

He’s working to dress the bullet wound, applying antiseptic. Merlin hisses at the sting. Apologising, Arthur works to pull threads of denim out of the mess. It’s something he would normally expect the team to do, but he doesn’t want anyone else touching this man, for reasons he doesn’t examine too closely.

Oddly, the wound seems somehow to be healing itself, far more quickly than he would ever have thought. The raw, exposed muscle is already skinning over; the thin layer of new skin is angry and pink but nevertheless fresh. It must be to do with the omega pheromones, the same ones that are making beads of sweat break out on Arthur’s forehead, drawn from him by the overwhelming effort of _not kissing._ He wouldn’t want the others to see this. They might talk, get Merlin sent away for research. He doesn’t know what would happen to an omega, not now. People in labs might _touch_ Merlin. And worse. The thought sends a protective chill darting through his gut.

“Right, that’s me off, then.” Percival puts his palm upon Merlin’s forehead. Instantly, Arthur is alert, fists balled, heart pounding. “Feel better soon, mate. It’s quite the temperature you’ve got there.”

A sudden surge of primal jealousy sweeps through Arthur when he sees those thick fingers on Merlin’s face. It’s all Arthur can do not to punch Percival’s hand away.

“Tell Gwen I’ll be keeping him in for observation,” growls Arthur, already mentally calculating where he can find a room with a lock, so that he can keep Merlin _safe_ , and gods help him, where no-one else can _touch_ him, because Merlin is his now. He can’t process why, or how, but that maddening scent that clouds his brain banishes all other thoughts.

When he looks up again, Percy has gone.

Gwen pokes her head around the curtain. “Mr Pendragon? Oh, hi, Arthur. Percival said you called for me?”

“Ah, yes. Thanks. I’d like to keep Merlin, here, under observation overnight.”

She nods and steps through, wielding a biro and notebook, and makes a note on Merlin’s chart.

“His temperature is fluctuating dangerously,” Arthur goes on. “We administered paracetamol and water at 18:20 to address the hyperpyrexia.”

Bang on cue, Merlin groans again and shifts his weight beneath the blanket. It’s a long, drawn out sort of groan, more of longing than suffering, and it shoots straight to Arthur’s groin.

A waft of that scent hits him like a wall. He’s as hard as granite beneath his trousers. Jesus, what’s happening to him? He has to get away from that overpowering scent. It’s too much.

Omega pheromones? In the twenty-first century? How come no-one warned him how they could take away his conscious thoughts and replace them with such a base, animalistic urge to take, to fuck, to possess… He’s losing it. His iron sense of will and control is waning. He has to get away. Panic hits him like a drug.

“There are no beds, Arthur,” Gwen says sharply, bringing him back to the present for a moment. Her mouth is a thin line. “We’re putting patients in offices, corridors…”

This comes as no real surprise.

“All right. I’ll put him in my office. I’ve just got to...” He has to get away. Has to! He pulls the curtains back and strides through, towards the exit, ignoring the whimper that Merlin lets out, desperately trying to sort out his whirling thoughts.

It can’t be… it’s impossible. There are none left in the world.

An omega. In heat. Arthur’s normally calculating medic’s brain is melting. A heavy miasma fogs his thoughts, rationality banished by a deep and abiding physical need. It pains him, to walk away. Every step that takes him further from Merlin is like knives slicing through his feet. A shudder wracks his body as he reaches the end of the corridor. He’s sweating, his body trembling with the effort. A primeval sense of wrongness jars every step; it’s _wrong_ to be leaving his omega, who needs him, needs him to... .

“Arthur,” Merlin calls, hoarse voice trembling. “Arthur, don’t leave me. I haven’t time. Arthur, please…”

Arthur’s gut clenches at the sound and he almost doubles over. Their distance burns. He must close it.

When he turns around, Merlin’s off the bed and on his feet, staring at him. He’s clad only in a Camelot Hospital gown. His face has taken on a high colour that highlights the penetrating blue of his eyes. Tousled hair, black and sleek with sweat, falls in clumps around his neck and throat. An expression of wild desperation flits across his face.

Now that the blankets are gone, there’s nothing between Arthur and the source of the maddening, dizzying scent that fills Arthur’s nostrils and drives out his sanity, as if Merlin’s body is a living machine that manufactures heat and pheromones designed only to rob Arthur of thought. He can’t believe no-one else can smell it. How can they stand it?

“It’s not water and paracetamol that I need,” Merlin hisses.

“Sir?” Gwen is trying to coax Merlin back onto the bed, but he shakes her off, albeit gently. The sight of her hand upon Merlin’s arm makes an angry fire course through Arthur.

No-one should be touching _his_ omega. No-one!

“It’s all right Gwen,” Arthur manages to say through clenched teeth. “I will take care of him.”

He wants to yell at her to get her hands off. By some miracle, he manages to stop his voice from trembling with rage. How dare she! How dare she touch him!

“But, Arthur, it’s changeover time!” Gwen says. “Cenred is already here…”

Cenred? He’s not having that greasy registrar’s sweaty paws all over _his_ omega. Arthur clenches his jaw.

“Good,” he manages to spit out between his teeth. “Cenred can look after the other patients; I… can tell that this case needs particular treatment. I will deal with Merlin myself.”

A worried line appears between her brows. “There are protocols… you can’t…”

“Don’t worry, Gwen,” he says firmly. He somehow manages to flash her a smile. “I know how to get this man’s fever down. And he trusts me, don’t you, Merlin?”

Breathing hard, Merlin nods.

She looks unconvinced, but ignoring her protests, Arthur stalks forward, resisting the urge to moan out loud in relief as he breathes in Merlin’s heady fragrance. Something tightly coiled and painful in his belly loosens with every step he takes, every step that brings him closer to the omega (to _his_ omega, supplied an insistent part of his mind. To his _mate_.) His gut twists and his cock twitches and his knot throbs and his legs are shaking with the urgency of his need, but he manages to nod at her without being too curt. He puts a hand on Merlin’s arm. Instantly, with one touch, the fire in his limbs is quieted. Something more primordial and instinctive replaces it.

“I will take care of you,” he whispers, guiding Merlin to the bed with gentle hands that want only to linger on the heat of naked flesh. “I know now what you need.”

Merlin whimpers at that, a brief cut-off sound that slices through Arthur’s belly and makes his cock jerk. Merlin’s trembling, his eyes wide and pupils blown like those of a terrified animal, but it’s not just terror that is driving him. Arthur can tell by the way that Merlin’s gown is tenting over his groin, by the giddy waves of that tantalising scent that wash over him each time Merlin exhales.

Kicking the bed’s brake off with a decisive foot, Arthur places his hand back upon Merlin’s arm. This time, the skin to skin contact is like an electric shock that tenses every muscle and heightens the painful strain of his cock against his underclothes. He shields Merlin from view with his body as he wheels the bed across the crowded room, into his office, nodding calmly at his colleagues who seem unconcerned. And why wouldn't they be? None of them is an alpha; none of them would be affected by this painful urgency that pricks Arthur’s skin and makes him want to lift his head to the heavens and howl out his need. And his cock. His cock! It swells and tightens, so hot and so heavy, dampening his underclothes, painting them with a pungent fluid that surely Merlin can smell.

“Arthur. Please! It hurts!” Merlin’s groaning, his head thrashing upon the hospital bed, delirious with the fever that flushes his neck and bare arms and legs.

A sudden flash of worry sparks through Arthur. Merlin’s temperature is already dangerously high, and climbing. And if everything he has read is true, only the attention of an alpha can save Merlin from his uncontrollable heat now.

Beyond thought, he’s already unzipping his fly even as he hustles Merlin into his empty office. The door closes behind him and he spares a second to turn the key in the lock, but oh, Lord! That scent, oh that scent! The man, he’s Arthur’s _patient_ , Arthur can’t, he can’t... he really has to stop this, stop it now. But he can’t! Merlin _needs_ him...

But there’s nothing he can do. A primeval force in him, merciless and instinctive, pulls him inexorably closer, closer. His cock is so hard. It hurts. He frees it, grasps it, palms the nascent knot, and groans.

“Fuck.” Merlin stands, bending forward, his head on the desk, the hospital gown parted around his bare arse like a river flowing around a rock. He turns his head. Seeing Arthur’s cock jutting proud from his fly, he whimpers. “Look at you. I need you _now_. Please, Arthur!”

Arthur can see _all of it_ , the heady fluid that’s escaping from Merlin and beckoning him in. But dear God, above everything else he can smell it. The scent fills him and overpowers him. He breathes it in, and it’s like every craving he’s ever had, rolled up into one and multiplied by a billion. He’s powerless. Merlin’s sweat is pouring from him, drizzling the table and making it glisten. It magnifies the scent tenfold.

“I can’t,” Arthur pleads, his hand moving on his throbbing cock. His own scent grows and mingles with Merlin’s, an intoxicating mix. The air is thick. This has to happen. He can’t stop it. The inevitability makes his cock twitch in his hand. “You’re wounded! Please, let me heal you!”

He doesn’t know why he’s pleading. Merlin has to leave (he can never leave). Then maybe Arthur will keep his sanity intact. Maybe he will escape with his job. But...

“I’ll be fine if only you’ll just fuck me,” says Merlin, tense-jawed, in a low, guttural voice, thick like honey, filled with desperation and want that tugs Arthur closer until his cock is nudging at that hot furl. “Oh, God, yes. Oh, God!” Merlin’s eyes flash golden as he presents himself.

He’s hot and his face is flushed pink and his hair is matted with sweat and the heat of him on the fat tip of Arthur’s cock is like a high, keening note desperate to be resolved. Arthur nudges at the furl again, breath coming in fast gasps, heart thudding like thunder.

“Oh, God yes. Fuck me. Please.”

Arthur sinks forward with a cry. Important papers on his desk scatter onto the floor, ink smudged and blurred with sweat.

“I really shouldn’t be doing this,” he whispers, but it feels so good, and Merlin’s so hot and slick and burning up around him. He goes to pull out, but…

 _“Please!_ Don’t stop! Knot me! I know you can! I could smell it the moment I came in here.”

“Gods.” Arthur groans. “If I knot you, you’ll be _mine_. Is that what you want?” It’s what Arthur wants. He knew it from the first time they locked eyes. No-one else shall have Merlin.

“Oh yes. That’s what I want, more than anything. _Please_.” The deep, pleading note in Merlin's voice makes a sharp need thrum through Arthur’s gut. 

He fucks back in again, and it feels so _good_ , and as he cants his hips, Merlin lets out a breathless gasp.

“Don’t stop,” he says, arching his back, making such a pretty arc that Arthur buries his face in it, sucking sweat off Merlin’s fever-baked skin, salt-slick and honeyed. “Oh, fuck, yes, that’s what I need, that thick, hot cock of yours, deeper, come on!”

Arthur needs little encouragement. He curls his hand around Merlin’s cock, and Merlin fucks into his fist in time with the rhythm of Arthur’s hips. It’s intoxicating, the way that each thrust elicits a tiny grunt from Merlin. He watches, fascinated, as his knot thickens further than he’s ever seen it before, so that it looks impossibly big. It can’t possibly... But as he sinks in again, it’s as if Merlin is pulling him. Slick seeps out around his cock, fragrant and enticing, coating his knot, and it doesn’t take much effort to push past that final resistance. With a hoarse cry, Merlin admits his knot. He consumes it, swallows it whole until Arthur can’t believe his eyes. His hips stutter and he spills with a cry, bliss flooding through him in drugging waves.

Merlin cries out, and his cock twitches, pulsing with his release. They’re joined, Arthur’s knot buried deep in Merlin, and he’s at peace now, content to revel in the moment.

Merlin can’t be comfortable, bent low across the desk like that. In response to a protective urge, Arthur rubs a gentle hand along Merlin’s flanks and haunches, avoiding the wounded thigh. He shuffles back, taking care not to dislodge his knot or cause his omega any discomfort. He pulls them both up onto the bed with Merlin upon his lap at first, but then he carefully turns onto his side, knot still buried deep, ensuring that Merlin is not putting any weight on the injured leg. Merlin’s skin is cooling, though still damp with sweat. His temperature, although still high, is no longer furnace-like.

Arthur can’t remember what he says, murmuring and nuzzling against Merlin’s slender neck, whispering into the dark hairs that curl onto his nape. His knot is still pulsing, and Merlin’s heat is still engulfing him, and a sweet urgency begins to build again.

The giddy aroma of their coupling is even headier than Merlin’s earlier heat. Arthur’s still rock hard. He can feel his seed seeping out around his knot and his cock. The sensation fills him with longing. He’s nearly ready to go again, to drag his knot across Merlin’s most sensitive bundle of nerves, making Merlin gasp and whimper until he spends, replete and filled with Arthur’s seed.

“What did they do to you?” he says, then gasps as another wave of bliss passes over him and he spills more heat. “When they found out about you?”

“Does it matter?” Merlin shrugs, his shoulders tensing. “They shan’t find me again.”

“They shan’t,” agrees Arthur, gripping Merlin’s hip with a grim tightness. “I will look after you now.”

Merlin lets out a low chuckle, and the rumble of his voice sends another spasm coursing through Arthur.

“Trust me to be mated by a possessive prat with a protective streak a mile wide.”

“You don’t sound too upset about it,” growls Arthur.

“No.” Merlin turns his head, and it’s an awkward position but he still manages to plant those soft lips on Arthur’s. “I’m really not.”

Arthur could grow attached to those lips. They're all sorts of dangerous, he can already tell. And as for that spiral of sweat-dark hair that folds behind Merlin's ear, well, it just begs to be nuzzled. And the pale crease along Merlin's neck, too. Highly hazardous.

"You should have a public health warning," Arthur breathes. "i should put notices up with the anti-smoking ones. Avoid this man." He breaks the kiss, presses his nose to the soft curve of Merlin's shoulder, sweat-salt and pink with exertion. "Severe risk of addiction. Keep clear at all costs" 

"You should too." The curve of Merlin's mouth betrays his pleasure. "This man fucks like a demon. Beware his cock. Perilous penis. Severe danger of extreme bliss."

"Perilous penis?" Arthur barks out a laugh, and tries to think of a funny retort.

But it's very difficult to think about anything, with Merlin's tight furl pressing insistently against Arthur's knot like that. So he rocks back in instead and growls in Merlin's ear, gratified at the way his breath raises goose bumps on the back of Merlin's neck, at the way that Merlin arches and shivers back into his touch. 

Let the bounty hunters come. He has found his omega and no force on earth can separate them now. 

  
*END*  
  


 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Not my characters, I'm not getting paid.


End file.
